Mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated powerful and can provide a variety of applications with varied network demands in terms of latency, throughput, data speeds and the like. So far, mobile networks (of up to 4G), mainly serving mobile phones, have been optimized primarily for phones. The next generation of mobile networks beyond the 4G LTE mobile networks of today (5G networks) are expected to provide ultra-high radio speed (20 Gbps/UE); ultra-low latency (E2E in msec); and massive connectivity. 5G networks will have to serve a variety of devices with different characteristics and needs. Some of the most mentioned use cases for 5G networks are mobile broadband, massive internet of things (IoT), and mission-critical IoT, and they all require different types of features and networks in terms of mobility, charging, security, policy control, latency, reliability, etc. For example, a massive IoT service that connects stationary sensors measuring data such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. will not require features like handover or location update, which have been critical in serving mobile phones. Alternately, a mission-critical IoT service (like autonomous driving or remote controlled robots) requires a substantially low end to end (E2E) latency of less than a ms. These different requirements can be accommodated by dynamic network slicing. Network slicing capitalizes on the capability of software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) orchestration comment analytics. In 5G mobile networks, network slicing will allow operators to design, deploy, and customize different “slices” of the network, running on a common network infrastructure. Each slice will have independent characteristics for best delivering a particular service type and sharing resources between services and slices. Network slicing will allow telecom operators to provide networks on an as-a-service basis and meet the wide range of use cases. Thus, in a single 5G system, network slicing technology can provide connectivity for smart meters with a network slice that connects “internet of things” devices with a high availability and high reliability data-only service, with a given latency, data rate and security level. At the same time, the technology can provide another network slice with very high throughput, high data speeds and low latency for an augmented reality service.
The object of slicing in general is to use virtualization technology to architect, partition and organize computing and communication resources of a physical infrastructure to enable flexible support of diverse use case realizations. With network slicing, one physical network is sliced into multiple virtual networks, each architected and optimized for a specific requirement and/or specific application/service. A network slice is self-contained in terms of operation and traffic flow and can have its own network architecture, engineering mechanisms and network provision.
Smart mobile devices integrated into a 5G network will be able to support existing and emerging types of applications with diverged service requirements and spectrum bands (e.g. existing cellular band such as 700 mHz, and new 5G high frequency bands for mmW), etc. To meet such diverged requirements improving smart mobile device efficiency is very important. Virtualization and slicing network resources for different types of services to allow all services sharing the same network resources, yet with some partitions that most efficiently deploy resources for each slice.
Current industry efforts mainly focus on network slicing including e.g. RAN and core in the mobility network. Some efforts also look at the user equipment (UE) slicing, but focuses on placing service(s) on proper slice of the mobile network based on different type of services and operator policy.
There is a need to extend the slicing concept to the end device and provide dynamic device resource allocation/re-allocation, including radio resource, processing, memory, battery, etc. on each slice based on applications, network SDN control, user/network policy (e.g. service priority, etc.), and real time device resource utilization of each slice. There is a need to better utilize the device resources.